The Elation of Wolves
by Giddy TF2
Summary: 'He hears the voice of another man emanating from Hans' mouth. He's heard it before, always during battle, always surreal and majestic. It has teeth, fangs that will bite deep into him and never let go and drain him till there's nothing left if he isn't careful.' (RED Soldier/RED Medic - Douglas Meyer/Hans Kowoll)


Author's notes: Here be the seventh commissioned story for my Fanfiction Fundraiser, with thanks to love4asking! This isn't just my first Soldier/Medic story, it's also my first endeavor at writing someone else's TF2 OCs. What a fun, challenging story it was to write! I should also warn, it's violent and very dark, and I'm talking Hannibal-level violent and dark. So do read at your discretion. And you can read more about Hans here and here.

The soundtrack I listened to while writing this is from the Legends of the Fall OST, Revenge. I recommend listening to it while reading the story.

* * *

Hans has killed the enemy Medic, again.

From under his helmet, Douglas' gaze flits from Hans to the BLU Medic spread-eagled on the ground next to Hans. Blood pools beneath the dead Medic, fast and spreading, a liquid black hole that devours the snow blanketing the world. It turns the Medic's tattered coat and shirt an eerie shade of red. It paints the Medic's pallid, carved skin with smeared runes of a bitter, brutal language as old as the Earth itself. The Medic's blank eyes are open. They stare at him, into him, as if he holds the secrets of the universe in the caverns inside him.

He steps back. His boots crunch on the snow, loudly. He doesn't want his boots to get stained, he thinks, as the chill from a persistent gale settles in his head and chokes the battle-heat there to ashes. Blood's a nuisance to clean out of leather.

He takes another step back as the blood advances towards him. The air in front of his face mists from his heavy exhalation. Seeing the blood reminds him of his own injuries, of his shredded left flank when the BLU Soldier had assaulted him with that splintered-handle shovel. He feels no pain. He isn't bleeding. He's not dying. Not today.

_Yeah, run and hide, your Ma's not here to save you. This time I'll finish the job, boy, and you'll fucking deserve it._

In the mountains beyond, a wolf shatters the silence with its plaintive howl at the setting sun.

A low laugh escapes Hans. It's muffled by that plague doctor's bird-like beak mask. It emerges into the wintry air like the murderous cry of a raven in the gloom of night. Hans still has the large-toothed bone-saw in hand, slathered in thick red from end to end. Douglas still recalls the sharp sounds of its blade striking frail flesh and bone. He should be scared. He should, but he isn't. Not of Hans. Never Hans.

"Hans," he mumbles, his lips numb.

Hans stands up and gazes at him with glassy, black eyes. They're not Hans' eyes.

"Did you enjoy zhe show?"

He hears the voice of another man emanating from Hans' mouth. He's heard it before, always during battle, always surreal and majestic. It has teeth, _fangs_ that will bite deep into him and never let go and drain him till there's nothing left if he isn't careful.

Maybe he wants that. Maybe he's wanted that all along, from the moment he laid eyes on this Austrian doctor and saw a soul as broken as his.

"Ask me again with your mask off," he says, his lips cracking, his chest burning.

He watches one strap after another being unbuckled by gloved hands. The mask plummets to the snow. The wolf howls once more, but it's closer, so much closer. He feels its teeth sink into his flesh, his soul. He shuts his eyes as the beast wearing Hans' face slams into him, sending them over the edge, past the point of no return.

And they fall, they fall.

* * *

It's always snowing here, in this soundless, sunless place of gnarled, black trees and flat plateaus. Always cold and dead. He's always naked and he hates the cold so much, but he _needs_ it. It cools and subdues the seething heat within him. It buys him more time before the flames of hell claim him. Every flake of snow that perishes upon his skin is another second lost, another second nearer to his end.

The enormous beast lurking in the lightless forest surrounding this snowy plain knows that. It's waiting, watching, biding its time. It hungers for him, for his flesh and tears. It knows that it's a good day for him to die. He knows that too.

_Hänneschen, how lovely it is to see you again. How is little, sweet Mika?_

He is a puppet whose lips move with words that aren't his. The barren trees all around him scream and flail upon the utterance of that forbidden name. The earth underneath him quakes with their agony. He screams also, clutching at his neck, his eyes seeing only red, but he is drowned out by the wolf speaking again.

_Oh, how forgetful of me. You were her darling doctor and you slit her throat and now she's dead. Poor little, blind thing._

He gapes down at himself as a torrent of blood flows from an ear-to-ear gash across his neck. It coats his chest and belly and runs rivers down his trembling legs to the snow with each thrum of his pulse. He gapes at his bloody, tainted hands, then at the tree line dozens of feet away, at the glowing hazel eyes of the enormous, black wolf that stands there.

_Hush__. Clearly, you have been forgetful yourself. Do you not remember what I told you? _

"It wasn't my fault," he whispers, his hands covering the wound of his neck, his heart. "They who gave me this number on my arm, _they_ made me do it."

The trees weep with him. The wolf does not.

_Yes. It was their fault, not yours. _

The wolf stalks past the tree line and onto the plain. Its dense fur glistens like the night sky strewn with waning constellations. Its gigantic paws leave prints the size of dinner plates in the snow. Its eyes now smolder crimson, like fiery coals.

_Look upon me and remember, __Hänneschen Kowoll__. I am king, with the birthright to possess all and any that I wish._

The wet redness attiring his skin begins to swirl. He stares at it until words form, one word that isn't just any word. It's a name. The name of the one he loves, who will never see past his plague doctor's mask, past the edge of that round, steel helmet hiding those beautiful, blue eyes –

_HE IS MINE!_

The wolf's roar splinters the heavens and torments the cosmos. The trees cower in its supremacy. It hurtles into him like a towering wave, but he remains standing in its wake. The wolf knows his name. The wolf _knows_ him. The wolf has yet to lay one claw on him.

He will not die, not today.

"No," he whispers as the unholy bellow fades, shaking his head. "N-no, he isn't."

The blood smothering his body flows back up into the wound in his neck. The wound disappears. The snow ceases to descend and the wind flees. The forest shrinks in terror of the wolf's imminent response to his defiance.

The wolf takes a step forward, then another. Then another, and another, until he can feel its fetid, searing breath against his face and chest. His flesh melts. It doesn't hurt, not as much as it does to look into the wolf's eyes up close, to see himself in them.

_Too late, my dear __Hänneschen__. Far too late._

The beast bares its fangs. In those monstrous eyes, he sees himself smile.

* * *

The thrashings start a week after Ma runs away from home. Pa doesn't hold his fists back, or his kicks. Pa doesn't think twice about hitting him with a beer bottle either, if he can get his hands on one, and there's always one lying around after Pa's binge drinking nights.

"Come here! I said, _COME HERE_!"

He's sick of it, so fucking sick of it all. He gets why Ma left. He hates her for it, but at the same time, he gets it. He still recalls the cracking noise Ma's nose made when Pa smashed his fist into it. He still recalls what it felt like to have his own nose wrecked by Pa's fist.

"COME HERE, BOY, DON'T YOU _HIDE_ FROM ME!"

Pa's drunk at least seven bottles and has already gone on a yelling rampage about what a goddamn failure he is, that he can't get into a single military branch, that the doctors think there's something wrong with his head. Pa's been trying to beat him senseless since he blurted out that it's Pa's genes that did this to him, to _them_. Pa's in a killing mood tonight.

So is he.

"You think you can _run_ from me? You think your fucking _Ma's_ gonna _save_ you now?"

He hears Pa charging up the stairs like a rabid bull. He hears Pa shouting some more about Ma, about finishing him off for real tonight. He careens into the first room he reaches. It's Pa's study, with its rotting desk, chair, shelves and military books, rotting just like Pa. He lunges for the desk, for the top drawer. Pa appears at the door as he snatches the single-action .45 Colt revolver from the drawer. It's loaded. Pa always keeps his guns loaded and in the same places.

Pa doesn't yell this time. Pa's a strong fucker, even with the game leg he got after getting shot by a Kraut during the second world war. Pa never lets him forget that. They go down hard on the floor next to the desk. He wants to scream, wants to beg Pa to stop this, _stop this_, but Pa never listens. It never worked when Ma did it.

_I'm stronger than you. I'll show you just how much. Show you how much it hurts._

He sees lightning bolts behind his eyelids when Pa bashes his face with both fists. His blood splatters both their faces. His face contorts with the ache, the _rage_, and his brain boils and his bones tingle.

_I can kill you. Crush your windpipe. Snap your neck. _

He sees the jagged edges of the broken beer bottle in Pa's grip. He moves like a snake and something in him sings, something like power and joy, a hymn of preordained triumph.

_Blow your head to bloody smithereens with a bullet. _

He shoves the barrel of the revolver into the soft flesh of the underside of Pa's lower jaw. Pa freezes. So does he. He's on his back on the floor, one of Pa's hands wrapped around his neck, Pa on knees on top of him, and they stare at each other for an eternity. His breath is trapped in his throat. His body and mind are distant, weightless things. He feels like he's been here before, like he's going to be here again and again with a gun in his hand and his finger on the trigger. He sees Pa's lips curl back, sees Pa's yellowed, harsh teeth and canines. He hears Pa snarl like a wolf.

The beer bottle rises higher into the air above his head.

His thumb pulls back the hammer of the revolver.

_This time I'll finish the job, you bastard, and you'll fucking deserve it._

Pa's quick. He's quicker. He pulls the trigger and goes deaf from the report. The back of Pa's head vanishes in an exploding cloud of wet red that decorates the wall behind with stripes and stars. What's left of Pa topples to the side onto the floor and lays there in a pumping lake of blood, hollowing itself of its remnants of humanity. The beer bottle rolls from a limp hand and clinks its way under the desk.

The revolver drops from his tremoring hand. It lands with a thump on the floor. He doesn't hear it, doesn't hear anything, not the thundering of his heart or his frantic breathing. He scoots backwards until he collides into a wall. He stays there for a long, long time, even after he hunches over to vomit all over the floor.

His hearing returns while he's in the bathroom, after vomiting again into the toilet bowl. He doesn't recognize the blood-spattered man in the mirror above the red-tinged sink. He's killed a man for the first time, and it's his own dad, he's killed a man, _he's killed Pa_ –

_It wasn't your fault_, _Douglas Meyer._

He stares at the man in the mirror, his lips, his hands, his whole body quivering. The man stares back at him with blue eyes that gleam with dark cunning and blinding clarity.

_It wasn't your fault. He was gonna kill you. You were defending yourself._

The man sounds just like him. Sounds so formidable, so _certain_. It mesmerizes him. Comforts him.

"It … it w-wasn't my fault," he whispers back. "He – he was gonna kill me. I was just defending myself."

_Yes. It was his fault, not yours._

He blinks. He stops quivering. He sees the man in the mirror nod and he does the same, a calm detachment pervading him. Yes. It's true. It wasn't his fault. He never asked to be born into this world, like this. He never asked to be abandoned by Ma. He never asked to be beaten day after day by a goddamn alcoholic fucker who was the biggest failure of all. He never asked for any of it. He was just defending himself, his right to _live_. That's all.

Later, as he watches his house and what's left of Pa raze to the ground in hellfire, he hears the mournful howl of a wolf at the full moon. It makes the beast in him smile.

* * *

They go down hard on the snow, and Douglas swallows a moan of shock as Hans seizes his face and kisses him. His helmet flies off his head. His eyes go wide and blind. His pulse skyrockets to a deafening rhythm. He's torn between ripping his mouth away and punching Hans bloody, torn between leaning into the open-mouthed, fervent kiss and going up in flames just like his past did.

He hears his name rasped in that voice that isn't quite Hans'. Hans is tearing open his coat, roving bare hands under his shirt and all over his chest and belly. He shudders from head to toe at their scorching warmth. He's cold, he's been so cold for so long and he's sick of it and he wants the heat he's found in this enigmatic, hazel-eyed doctor.

He _needs_, so badly.

His fists open up into frenzied hands. His restraint is blown to hell by the metallic scent permeating Hans' coat, by Hans' aroma that makes his nostrils flare, makes his fingers coil into Hans' tousled, sweat-soaked, dark brown locks. He's getting strung out on the fragrance of their desire and oh, he should be scared, he _should_ but it's _Hans_. It's shy, handsome Hans kissing and fondling him like this, groaning into his mouth, grinding their hips together.

In the mountains beyond, the howl of a wolf shatters the empty skies once more.

The electrifying sensation of their hardening cocks rubbing against each other, even with layers of cloth between them, awakens the monster lurking in the caverns within him.

He flips them over and pushes between Hans' legs and grips Hans' wrists with both hands. He lets Hans struggle against him, watches and feels Hans writhe sinuously and listens to the delicious, lustful moans that pour out of Hans' mouth. He dives down and kisses and bites Hans' lips, reveling in their noises, in the fresh hint of blood when he bites a little too hard. He licks the thin scar across the top bridge of Hans' nose, suckles the scar stretching from left cheekbone to chin.

It's his turn to tear apart clothes now, tear open Hans' coats, shirt and pants, tear into Hans' hirsute chest and peaking nipples with his lips and teeth until Hans' eyes are fogged and tumultuous at the same time and Hans can't breathe. The turbulence in Hans bursts out in more strident cries. They echo across the snow, echo in Douglas.

As their bodies bump urgently, he wriggles a few fingers into Hans' mouth and knows he's taking a risk by enclosing his other hand around Hans' long neck. Hans has a _thing_ about necks, bad enough that their Heavy Weapons Guy paid a hefty price for it when the big Russian lug playfully grabbed Hans' neck months ago. Hans could kill him in a number of ways right now; break his ribs into his heart and lungs, rend open this throat with teeth, send the bones of his nose straight into his brain.

He tightens his fingers and cuts off Hans' air supply.

He sees hazel eyes pop open and stare up at him. They're not Hans' eyes. It isn't Hans who's about to make him come in his pants, whose turgid cock is spurting white come so beautifully onto a heaving, hairy belly.

"Tell me your name," he growls at the beast wearing Hans' face, withdrawing saliva-glazed fingers. "_TELL ME_!"

A crack appears on Hans' lower lip and bleeds as Hans' lips move in compliance.

"I am … Jager."

The monster in Douglas roars at the heavens in wrath and jealousy of this stranger's intimacy with the one he loves, who will never see past his helmet, past that plague doctor's mask and its glassy, black eyes. His lips curl back to exposed harsh teeth and canines. He looms over the other man, yanks open his pants with his free hand and jerks his aching cock out. His hand around the other man's neck tightens even more, more, and then his orgasm batters him like a stormy tide, making him yowl and come all over the semen already there on that hairy belly.

"_He's_ _mine_," he decrees an eon later, as snow begins to fall upon them and all around them.

In the mountains beyond, the wolf is silent.

* * *

That night, in the safety of darkness, Hans goes to Douglas' room. Douglas lets him in without a word, with an immediate, desperate kiss. They tumble into Douglas' bed and Hans lets Douglas tear off his clothes, his masks. Douglas kisses and licks and sucks every inch of his body as if he is a god to be worshipped. Douglas moans so exquisitely, excruciatingly when he timidly begs to be fucked on all fours like the sinful animal he knows he really is.

"Tell me your name," Douglas whispers into his ear. "Please."

He shudders at the sensation of Douglas' cock running along the lubricated crack between his buttocks, prodding at the entrance to his nervous, excited body.

"Hans … I am Hans," he murmurs back.

His eyes shut and his breath stutters as Douglas thrusts deep into him. Douglas' cock is thick and _perfect_, making his body dance with a glory it never had before. He moans with every pounding on his prostate. He feels hot, so hot, untouched by the cold and snow and beasts lurking in lightless forests.

Douglas says nothing about the wetness on his face as he comes, or about his acquiescence at Douglas drawing him close under the covers.

"You're mine. Mine."

He remains awake long after Douglas drifts into slumber. He inhales Douglas' aroma, blinks, and wonders if Douglas had been speaking to him or to the monster within him.

* * *

It's snowing here, as usual. He stands naked as usual on this snowy plateau surrounded by this dead, black forest, waiting, watching.

This time, however, the breath of the enormous, black wolf doesn't scald him. It stands before him with its head bowed and in an unprecedented move, he reaches out and lays his hand flat upon the fur between its ears. It's as terrifying and amazing as he'd imagined.

"I made you," he says, and he sees the wolf's lips move with his words.

The forest is quiet with religious awe.

_I am king_, the wolf says, and his lips move with words that aren't and yet are his.

There is a split in the blank expanse above. It's letting in blades of sunlight that cut swaths into the snow around them, melting it. Sprouts of green are springing from the revealed soil.

"He is ours," he decrees, thinking of rays of dusk glinting off a steel helmet, of large, calloused hands that adore him so, of blue eyes that shine brighter than the sun at him.

The wolf does not challenge this. It lays down on its side in the thawing snow, and he lays down upon it, curling into its warm, copious fur and nuzzling it. It embraces the placated heat within him. It keeps the chill away, but also tames the flames of hell that prowl the corners of his mind. Every flake of snow that perishes upon his skin is another to be cherished, to remind himself that he is still here to feel them.

Yes, the beast beneath him knows it is a good day to die. He knows it too.

But it is an even better day to live.

**Fin**


End file.
